BERTLMANN'S SOCKS AND THE NATURE OF REALITY

Abstract : The Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen correlations are very like many ordinary occurrences of everyday life. So it is a little difficult for the man in the street to understand immediately why there has been so much fuss about them. It must be recalled that the founding fathers of quantum mechanics had convinced themselves that it was necessary to abandon the idea of an objective reality at the microphysical level. But the correlations in question, together with the idea of local causality, were a formidable argument for such a reality. The founding fathers offered counter-arguments (neither very clear nor very convincing in my opinion) and each side held to its position. Since then it has been possible to push the analysis a little further, considering especially situations just a little different from those considered before. Then correlations appear, according to quantum mechanics, which are not at all like those of everyday life. As a result it is not now easy to believe, with Einstein, that quantum mechanical predictions are reconcilable with the notion of a Lorentz invariant objectively real microphysical world.